Life Indoors in Qatar during COVID-19

Blogger : Bukky

Before COVID....

Life before COVID-19 was pretty regular.

Working days are Sunday – Thursday; 7am – 3.30pm and with minor traffic, I’ll normally be home by 4pm. Tobi starts school at 7.15am so I’m usually up just after 5am and the daily motions start. Tobi’s nanny resumes at 6am and helps in getting Tobi ready for school whilst daddy prepares breakfast and lunch packs.

The evenings are used in catching up with friends and family, reviewing schoolwork, laundry, making dinner, etc. Some days we order in or go out for a meal.

Friday is when we attend church service which lasts for 1hr 30mins and the rest of the weekend is used for shopping, extra-curricular activities, preparing meals, ironing.

During COVID...

Due to the virus, all non-essential stores are closed. If I was procrastinating about buying clothes in specific shops, this will pose a challenge now. However, supermarkets are still open and they stock food and clothing so I’ll just have to settle for that option. We can go food shopping as usual although they enforce maximum of 2 people in the car due to social distancing so daddy tends to pick up the groceries on his way back from work or we opt for online shopping. There was panic buying at the start but there was plenty of stock so we didn’t miss out on anything. I guess some people were expecting total lock down but that’s not the case.

The government encouraged 80% of the workforce to work from home whilst the remaining can work in the office from 7am – 1pm. Exceptions were also made for senior citizens, people with prior health conditions and expectant mothers.

Cinemas and sporting events are also closed so we have to revert to Netflix for entertainment and YouTube for fitness videos.

We participate in online church as well as online cell groups using Zoom for video conferencing.

Tobi hasn’t been able to attend her extra-curricular lessons as the focus was face-to-face learning so the centre is not geared for online tutoring. We have also temporarily suspended her face-to-face piano lesson but if she was advanced, we could have utilized Skype or other technology to continue the lesson.

Including her Easter holiday, Tobi has been at home for 6 weeks now. During term time, her school provided online lessons and group video calls periodically so the children can have a catch-up. Her teacher also arranged one-on-one video conferencing to check on Tobi and to ensure that her online activities challenged her.

Tobi can attend to most of her activities without supervision and that helps a great deal as I’m working from home whilst daddy still goes to the office every day. For complex school activities, these are addressed after working hours.

Her school provided a variety of activities keeping Tobi engaged and when she’s done with her schoolwork, she’s allowed to watch movies, play with her toys, play games, etc. whilst I concentrate on work with minimal distraction.

The first week was tough as it was uncharted territories but with everything you learn as you go along and make appropriate adjustments. There are days when school activities are excessive and on other days, she manages to finish her tasks early. Since the first week, I’ve introduced longer break intervals to spread the work evenly. I also add extra tasks from the optional school activities to minimise excessive spare time.

I try to maintain the school routine of work, snack time, more work, play time, lunch, work, contacting her friends before ending the day as much as possible. I allow her to call her friends so she can socialize that way as she is an only child.

I miss my ergonomic workstation and also my dual screen from the office as I work with a lot of data, so it’s been challenging to use the small laptop screen as this is less effective and more time consuming.

Another challenge is the distraction from Tobi when I am trying to maintain the façade of professionalism. Tobi likes joining my team meetings just to say hi to my colleagues. It distracts from her school work and I felt uncomfortable as it looks a little unprofessional. However, my colleagues were fine with it. I realized the video was the attraction and I now join the meeting on audio only (although that’s not the only reason… it also makes the connectivity a lot smoother!)

I work longer hours which was not what I expected but it could also be related to the time of the year as our financial year ends in March so it’s been very busy with tight deadlines for deliverables. I would love to apply work-life balance but this is not currently possible but I’m hopeful I can implement this before things resume to normal.

We have coped really well. I have been really impressed with Tobi given that she doesn’t have access to her friends from school, her kids club or from church but she understands the gravity of COVID-19 and she’s adapted very well. We also take regular walks to get fresh air and see the outside world!

There is an area in Qatar that has been locked down completely due to high infectious cases. It’s our collective duty to show love and care for one another. So check on others, reach out to people who have lost loved ones or lost their source of income. Be an extension of God’s love on earth and pray things pick up positively sooner than we all expect.

Please like and share. I'm sure there's at least one person who may be encouraged :)

Your fellow Rookie Parent,

Bukky

Bukky & Kunle are Nigerian-born Britons and have a 7 year old daughter, Tobi. Their home is in Hertfordshire, UK.

They work globally, travelling together wherever work takes them. Home is currently in Qatar.

They are authors of a Parenting book 'A beginner's guide to early parenting'. They also run a charity Culbeat Foundation focusing on Youth, Education, Healthcare and the less privileged.